Adam Platt Predicts a Dull Future for ‘Top Chef’

Spike goes down for the dirt nap, at long last.
Photo: Courtesy of Bravo

Last night’s episode of Top Chef finally rid us of Spike Mendelsohn, who went down for the sin of making frozen scallops in a steakhouse Elimination Challenge. Ironically, Spike had won the Quickfire Challenge earlier in the show, butchering and cooking an untrimmed rib steak to the satisfaction of a Chicago steakhouse chef. Once he picked out the frozen scallops, though, his demise was as inexorable as the Gorgon’s gaze, and the show lacked drama as a result. We and Adam Platt considered the results afterward via IM.

Ozersky: Thus ends Spike of the Silly Hats.

Platt: Did you notice he wasn’t wearing any silly hats this episode? It was his undoing.

Ozersky: That wasn’t it. Spike was obviously doomed from the moment he picked out those frozen scallops.

Ozersky: The whole contest was strange. They went to all the trouble of cooking those “103” rib chops different ways, and then that tubby chef from Chicago didn’t even taste them!

Platt: I liked the steakhouse gimmick. I imagine you were sitting in your bear’s lair, panting with joy.

Ozersky: Not so much. I hate to see a bone trimmed of its precious intercostal meat like that.

Ozersky: It was like seeing a mountain crumble.

Platt: So you were panting with rage. But I thought the steakhouse aspect made it realistic. And the fact that it was steak kept things grounded from a culinary standpoint. But who was that tubby chef from Chicago?

Ozersky: I never heard of him.

Platt: That makes two of us, my petulant friend! So what will happen in Puerto Rico? More important, why Puerto Rico?!

Ozersky: Maybe the Puerto Rican chamber of commerce donated two pigs and a keg of beer to the show.

Ozersky: Here’s what I want to know. How did the Gorgon escape with peanut-butter mashed potatoes? Or for that matter, how did Richard get away with that hideous plate-art installation? I can really imagine portly Chicago burghers going wild over that one!

Platt: I like how Don Colicchio relentlessly hazes Sharkface Richard. I pray the two come to blows in Puerto Rico. This is almost it, right, Cutty? I don’t think I can take much more of this. Do we know who’s winning this interminable competition?

Ozersky: I think Stephanie is the front-runner at this point. They love her, she cooks middle-of-the-road food everybody likes … it’s hers to lose.

Platt: My money’s on Stephanie and Antonia. Sharkface will get out his gadgets, overthink his dishes, and go down in flames. and the Gorgon is in way over her towel-wrapped head. For the record, I can’t believe the Gorgon is going to Puerto Rico. The judges looked almost as stunned as she did.

Ozersky: I said it before, and I’ll say it again: No man can face the gaze of the Gorgon.